A new word I learned.

Admittedly, this is second-hand, but well worth sharing.

This kid I taught last year, let's call him Steve... wow, he was a crazy one. I won't get into specifics, but let's just say he was easily in the top-3 most challenging kids I've ever dealt with. That said, he's definitely likeable, in a weird way -- but, he will drive you fucking crazy.

Oh, and he's also exceedingly vulgar.

A colleague recently relayed an anecdote wherein he was having a conversation with the lad in question, and Steve used this phrase:

"he clapped her ass"

Now... to you and me, that might mean something like "he patted her on the derriere" -- you know, like two hands clapping means one hits the other. But no, it means... well... copulation.

Two things jump out at me.

1. That word is very typically South Scarberian -- partially opaque in meaning, short in length and sharp-sounding, and vulgar. Pure textbook.
2. Really? Steve thought it was appropriate to mention anal sex in a conversation with a teacher? That's god damn insane.

But then again, so is Steve.

Things teenagers say.

Vignette #1
Two boys, grade 9 science class working on seatwork, the day after Sidney Crosby got hit in the face with a puck

C: "Hey, what's the name of that guy who plays for the Leafs?"

J: "Um... which one do you mean?"

C: "You know, that famous guy. Is it... Stevie Wonder?"

J: (bewildered) "Uh... do you mean... Sidney Crosby, who plays for the Penguins?"

C: (relieved) "Yeah! That's the guy."

J: (bewildered) "Wow."

* * * * *

Vignette #2
Grade 9 science class, during a whole-class discussion about the Earth and the Moon and their structures

(N.B. "N's" English is about 70%; he's originally from Pakistan)

N: (at back of class) "Um... sir? Have you ever heard of... ah... what's it called... [makes gesturing motion with his hands]... I think it's called a... a 'glory hole'?"

class: (absolutely no reaction, [surprisingly])

me: (showing no outward reaction) "I... no, I've never heard of that."

N: (gesturing again) "It's... hmm. Well, have you ever heard of a hole that appears in the ground? Apparently it's really deep?"

me: (inwardly relieved) "Ah! You mean a sinkhole. Yeah, there was just one in Florida a few weeks ago that swallowed a house and killed a guy."

N: (relieved) "That's the story I heard too. Do we get them around here?"

me: "Nah, we're alright here. We have a different type of bedrock."

* * * * *

Vignette #3
Grade 12 physics class, most students are paying attention to the demo at the front of the class (some working on problems already)

Demonstration: Newton's Cradle (in the context of elastic collisions)

me: "So, eventually the motion dies down to nothing, because the collisions aren't entirely elastic, and the kinetic energy goes away into sound and heat. Then the balls are motionless." [you see where this is going. --ed.]

N: "How could you get the thing to go on forever?"

me: "If you lose a tenth of a joule of energy every time through, and the ball only has 1 J of energy to start with, that means in ten swings it's done. What you have to do, then, is increase the... uh... mass of the balls..."

N and a few others: (big grins, then bursts of laughter)

me: "Well then... I think I should probably just stop there."

Things teenagers say.

"If you're going to steal a car, you've gotta know how to parallel-park."

Truer words have possibly never been spoken.

Greetings from the Sunshine State.

Well, so much for writing here regularly.

Anyway, bitches, here I am. And where am I, pray-tell? Currently, I am seated on a chair in a room in a hotel in Lakeland, which is in Florida. It's my Seventh Annual Spring Training Baseball and First Sunburn Of the Year trip, and so far it's fulfilled both criteria:

1. spring training baseball
2. sunburn

Because I'm exceptionally pale -- they'd probably let me in the door at the Albino Convention -- I managed to get a pretty nice pink glow today. Part of it was my fault, as I'd forgotten to put on sunscreen before the game. But a good chunk of it goes to Mother Nature herself, because until noon it was either pouring rain or just sorta dreary and misty, thereby allowing me to forget the aforementioned sunscreen. What a bitch, eh?

Today's game was on the Gulf coast of Florida, in the city of Clearwater, against the Phillies. I've never been to Clearwater before, and I didn't really get to see much of it, but it's close to Tampa, and Tampa is a god damn hell hole. Ergo, there's bound to be some spillover to Clearwater, right?

(Actually, I don't think that's true at all. Clearwater is much closer to the coast than Tampa is, and the places on the coast tend to be tourstified/fancy/at-least-presentable. So there's that. If anything, Clearwater would form a barrier protecting the coast from the shittiness of Tampa, and vice-versa.)

After the game, instead of diving elbows-deep into Tampa's notoriously bad rush-hour freeway traffic -- the intersection of 275 and 4 is referred to as "Malfunction Junction" -- I decided to head up the coast a bit on US-19 to see what was up there. What I observed can be summarized in a bullet-point list.

• oodles of billboards frequently advertising things such as...
• vasectomies (including "No incision! No scalpel!" and an assurance that the doctor in question has performed over 26,000 such procedures)
• plastic surgery of various flavours (chiefly liposuction)
• personal-injury lawyers (including one with a female lawyer which asks rhetorically, "Have you ever argued with a woman?")
• a picture of a cute baby and the caption, "My heart starts beating 18 days after conception!" -- so, presumably, something right-to-life-ish
• gas station after gas station, all puzzlingly displaying different prices (in Toronto most of the stations move in perfect lock-step, except for full-serve ones which are consistently 0.4 cents per litre higher than self-serve)
• the red/green cycle on traffic lights is WAY longer here than in Canada, which makes for some idiotically-long backups
• lotsa churches, man

The jewels of the US aren't often found along these crazy-busy, strip-mall, chain-store roads. They're found in the smaller places, the independent stores, the places that you need to dig a little to find. Hell, tonight I had dinner at a little Turkish restaurant in downtown Lakeland, and it was fantastic (and not out on US-98 with the Applebee's and the Hooters and the TGI Friday's).

That's why I'd love to go back to France -- I visited Paris in 2001 for a week in July, and it was insanely busy and touristy -- but go to a much smaller place. I think it'd be amazing to find a little place in the middle of nowhere, where few people speak English (if any), and just chill out there for a week, forced to sharpen my rusty grade 11 French into something workable. Could be fun.

An admission.

WARNING / ATTENTION / ACHTUNG

The following post may be too much for some musically-sensitive people to handle.
If your record collection contains several albums' worth of prog-rock,
cool jazz from the '50s or anything by the Pixies,
reader discretion is strongly advised.

So there's this song, you see.

This song is called "Call Me Maybe," and it's done by a singer named Carly Rae Jepsen. Surprisingly for a pop song these days, she co-wrote it; now, whether she just came up with a couple of lines in the middle of the thing or she wrote the bulk of the music and lyrics, I'm not sure, but her name's on the credits, and that's more than I've ever been able to do.

By all accounts, I should hate it.

But I don't. And here's why.

It's catchy.

I think a main source of this catchiness is the lyrical flow in the chorus -- some words linger, but other ones are chopped-up and spat out staccato-style, and if you can hang on to all of 'em, it can be very satisfying for the listener.

Words in songs give the listener something to hang their hat on; if you have a guitar you can play along with a song, but most people don't carry one everywhere they go (except that hippie dude in your residence who thought that and a soul patch was all you need to get laid (and he very probably got laid more than I did in uni, but whatever)), so singing is easy and portable. It makes you feel good because connects you with the song very directly in a melodic way; dancing does the same thing, but in a large-motor-skill way.

It's not what I'd normally listen to. And frankly, I don't believe I've ever sat around and thought, "That 'Call Me Maybe' song, that'd really hit the spot right about now." But it's good at what it does, and in the right environment (e.g. in a fire-code-violatingly-jam-packed New Year's Eve house party at five minutes to midnight), it can be a hell of a lot of fun.

So there.

Booze Reviews #1: Four Loko Watermelon.

Beverage: Four Loko, watermelon flavour
Container: can
Size: friggin' huge
Alcohol by volume: 8%-ish
Price: pretty cheap

This beverage used to be a lot more controversial, as old formulations used to contain both alcohol and caffeine, and probably made some teenagers' hearts explode (but not in that My Chemical Romance-y way). The caffeine is out, but lordy, the alcohol remains.

There was no way I was going to drink this whole thing myself, lest my night turn violently shitty ridiculously quickly. So, I shared this with Drinkin'-Buddy Dave (DBD); we poured it into two glasses (not the good pint glasses, mind you) and had at it.

First impressions:

• "Oh my god, this tastes like incredibly alcoholic liquid watermelon Jolly Ranchers."
• "Jesus christ, this is terrible."
• "Who would choose to drink this?"

After many, many mouthfuls, you start to get desensitized to its incredible booziness; if you wait a couple of minutes and take another drink of it, it hits you anew. Finally we managed to put the rest of it away and move onto something more palatable.

I'll tell you this: if you were to drink a whole can by yourself fairly quickly -- it's 695 mL, which is about the volume of two bottles of beer (with significantly higher alcohol content) -- there's no way it won't fuck you up something fierce. I realize some people are looking for that, but I'm (usually) not. I'll stick to beer, thanks.

I know I should be making the most of my life.

I'm young (ish), I'm hot (temperature-wise), I should be out bangin' chicks, right?

Instead, I'm re-watching season 3 of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Q: Why?

A: Because it's god damn funny, that's why. Anytime Frank Reynolds describes a place as being "darker than a well-digger's ass," that's something I want to be a part of, as often as possible.

Also, in season 3, they really start nailing the "episode title comes up right after something totally awesome sets it up" gag. To wit: Mac, Charlie and Frank are preparing to fight boredom by shooting their own news show.

Dee, to Frank: "No, that's a bad idea. Usually when you get involved, somebody gets hurt."
Frank: "That's ridiculous. I'm just pallin'-around with the guys. How's anybody gonna get hurt?"
(pause)
title card: "Frank Sets Sweet Dee On Fire"

The timing is just fantastic. There's enough of a pause to make you wonder, Is this where the title-card joke comes in? And then, bang, it hits you, and even though you already know the title of the episode, the joke totally kicks your ass.

Yep. These are the golden years, these ones. Hooray for this moronic extended adolescence of minimal adult responsibilities aside from showing up for work, occasionally doing my laundry, and feeding myself somehow! Yaaaaayyyyy!!!!